No one who had occasion to get near the Economy Inn on Brainerd Road would be surprised the extended-stay hotel was condemned and shuttered Wednesday.
Rooms with open curtains looked habitually tossed, what appeared to be drug deals frequently occurred in public view in the parking lot, and people came and went as if the place were a shopping mall.
It turns out appearances weren't deceiving. Chattanooga Police made more than 800 calls there between Oct. 12, 2015, and Dec. 31, 2017. Many of the calls involved crimes, including narcotics violations, assaults, complaints of weapons being fired, thefts, robberies and attempted rapes.
"The amount of calls that police respond to, for this business alone, is outrageous compared to calls for service that police respond to at other surrounding businesses in the area," Officer Ayriek Novak told this newspaper.
So the abatement of nuisance petition filed in Criminal Court by Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston and the temporary injunction/restraining order signed by Criminal Court Judge Tom Greenholtz were hardly surprising.
Some social agencies, churches and the Hamilton County Department of Education were given a day or two of notice by Chattanooga police that the condemnation was coming down. But the 100 or so residents? They got an hour.
There is a reason for that, according to Melydia Clewell, spokeswoman for the Hamilton County District Attorney's office.
"Legally," she said in an email to this page, "we couldn't tell anyone about the padlock. The law doesn't allow us the opportunity to give notice" because of "the potential for tipping off people who might otherwise be caught participating in illegal activity."
The petition, Clewell wrote, is presented with only the state present in judge's chambers, "and as such is confidential until the business or property owner is served with the padlock order. ... Unfortunately, the law does not afford any exceptions for situations in which law-abiding tenants are negatively impacted."
Tenants, in fact, were negatively impacted, tenants who likely could find nothing else, tenants who probably had their worldly belongings in their room, tenants who had children in school.
When a similar situation at Superior Creek Lodge in East Ridge occurred two and a half years ago, a human crisis ensued. Residents had nowhere to go, no way to get there if they did, no furniture to speak of and no place to get mail. Help was generous but scattered at first. It spoke to a lack of planning by public officials.
In the case of Economy Inn, Clewell said the Chattanooga Police Department "volunteered to handle the social services" contacts, and the fact some agencies and the school district were contacted ahead of time indicates some lessons were learned from the last incident. But since tenants can't be notified, we wish all parties that might offer help could be contacted even sooner to make an unpalatable eviction at least more manageable.